James Gurney

This daily weblog by Dinotopia creator James Gurney is for illustrators, plein-air painters, sketchers, comic artists, animators, art students, and writers. You'll find practical studio tips, insights into the making of the Dinotopia books, and first-hand reports from art schools and museums.

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or by email:gurneyjourney (at) gmail.comSorry, I can't give personal art advice or portfolio reviews. If you can, it's best to ask art questions in the blog comments.

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All images and text are copyright 2015 James Gurney and/or their respective owners. Dinotopia is a registered trademark of James Gurney. For use of text or images in traditional print media or for any commercial licensing rights, please email me for permission.

However, you can quote images or text without asking permission on your educational or non-commercial blog, website, or Facebook page as long as you give me credit and provide a link back. Students and teachers can also quote images or text for their non-commercial school activity. It's also OK to do an artistic copy of my paintings as a study exercise without asking permission.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Strong light doesn’t usually come from below a face, so when you see it, it grabs your attention. We tend to associate it with firelight or theatrical footlights, which can suggest a magical, sinister, or dramatic feeling.

We hardly recognize family, friends, and celebrities when we see them with the light shining upward on their features.

Sources of light that shine upward are often strongly colored, either with the warm orange glow of firelight, or with the blue flicker of a computer screen.

The portrait of the character Lee Crabb from Dinotopia, below, shows him at a dramatic moment when he wants to take control of a powerful glowing sunstone. The ruby-colored light from the sunstone gives him a threatening, power-mad look. The underlighting is combined with a strong, cool edge light from the right.

Not all upward light arrangements suggest drama or evil. A person relaxing with a sun-flooded book might have her face lit mainly by the reflected light, which would have positive connotations.

This reminded me of an excerpt from The Ancestor's Tale, in which Dawkins describes an experiment suggesting that baby chicks have a built-in preference for lighting from above. He goes on to surmise a similar disposition for humans.

Also, I vaguely remember you mentioning in a past post that facial recognition had been proven to be 3-dimensional. Do you have a link to that?

Great, all these posts about portrait lighting... I suppose they're meant for the upcoming book (that I will buy certainly but only read after I have finally 'consumed' Imaginative Realism (from which I tend to read only a few pages at the time, like tasting a good wine))?

Another form of facial underlighting that has a positive, non-sinister connotation (for me, at least) is the light on a person swimming in an outdoor swimming pool at night. That particular blue on the chin reminds me of road trips with my grandparents as a kid, when after a day in the back seat of the car my cousin and I could get wrinkly in the motel pool.